Frozen food distribution specialist Yearsley Group has invested a further £1.3m to install solar panels at five more of its depots.

The Heywood-based group spent £2.2m last year on solar panels at its headquarters and cold store in Holmewood, near Chesterfield. Now it has installed a total of 5,800 panels at depots in Bristol, Grimsby, Belle Eau Park in Newark, Coleshill in Warwickshire and Seaham in Co Durham. They take the total number of panels across Yearsley's sites to 9,000. They will generate 1.75m kilowatt hours of power a year, helping to reduce the group's reliance on the national grid and cut its carbon footprint. Yearsley now plans to install wind power and other forms of renewable energy across its sites.

A recruitment business has opened an office in Canada to serve clients in the oil, gas and mining sectors.

*Leap29, which has its headquarters in Knutsford, Cheshire, has established a presence in Calgary, Canada's third largest city which lies in the heart of the country's booming oil and gas and minerals industries. The city is also close to key exploration and extraction sites in British Columbia and the Northwest Territories.

Leap29's Canada director Brendan O’Connell said: “We have had a warm reception from our existing clients with operations in Alberta and British Columbia. We have also had a lot of interest from Canadian businesses, which are excited about Leap29’s global network of oil and gas professionals and our ability to quickly identify and mobilise the best staff, wherever they might be in the world.”

*Plans to build 25 homes on the site of a former military base in Warrington have been given the go-ahead.

Elan Homes has secured planning permission for the scheme at the site, which was known as HMS Gosling and RAF Croft in the 1940s and 1950s respectively, but has lain derelict since it closed in 1959. Elan will build four and five-bedroomed homes on the 8.6-acre site, with about 80 per cent of the land left as a protected woodland and wildlife area.

The company, which has its northern headquarters in Ellesmere Port, will soon begin work on a scheme to redevelop a former car sales and service centre on Audenshaw Road, Audenshaw, Tameside, to provide 17 detached homes. Other schemes where work is due to start include ones in Cranage and Mouldsworth in Cheshire.

*A building services company is celebrating a hat-trick of contract wins, including one which heralds its entry into a new sector. SDH Building Services, based on Forest Way, Bolton, has been appointed to design, supply and install a heating, plumbing, air-conditioning and ventilation at the British Red Cross's new first aid training call centre in Manchester. SDH has also won a refurbishment contract at Hull Paragon rail station – its first in the sector – and a design, supply and installation deal at a new bakery in London.